Thanks to all the bloggers and social media folk who have posted this video, and many thanks to Eerdmans for filming it and editing it. It's eight minutes or so long, and it's focus is my book Thomas and the Gospels (Eerdmans, SPCK, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk):

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The Kenneth Clark lectures are an annual highlight of the Duke calendar. This year, Amy-Jill Levine is the Clark lecturer, and the series kicks off today:

--Kenneth W. Clark Lectures 2013:

Guest Speaker: Amy-Jill Levine

Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science; she is also Affiliated Professor, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge U.K. Holding a B.A. from Smith College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, she has honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Drury University, and Christian Theological Seminary. Her recent books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (co-authored with Douglas Knight). With Marc Brettler she edited the Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford). A self-described Yankee Jewish feminist, Professor Levine is a member of Congregation Sherith Israel, an Orthodox Synagogue in Nashville, Tenn., although she is often quite unorthodox.

Late Antiquity Made New brings together more than fifty internationally recognized scholars of Late Ancient and Early Christian Studies and their related disciplines. The conference has two projects: documenting the emergence of “Late Antiquity” as a discipline within and beyond the Study of Religion during the past four decades, and exploring directions for contemporary and future research in the field.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

It's been a week or two since I've posted anything on the forthcoming History Channel Series The Bible, executive produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. I and several others (including Helen Bond, Paula Gooder, Candida Moss and Craig Evans) acted as academic consultants on the series. An extended trailer is now available here:

Several more clips are also available on Youtube. This is from episode 1 about Abraham and features interview footage with British actor Gary Oliver who plays Abraham:

I love the fact that he remembers watching Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth when he was eleven, which means that he is a similar age to me -- and that was a memorable experience in my life too.

This video is in the same format -- interview footage with British actor Lonyo Engele who plays, rather appropriately, the Guardian Angel, also in the first episode. He also talks about how he has seven angel tattoos on his body! There is some footage here of the destruction of Sodom.

This one is in the same format again, an interview with British actress Kierston Wareing who plays Delilah in Episode 3, along with footage from that episode. There are some interesting reflections here on the accent she used; she is an Eastenders actress who has a cockney-sounding accent but she wants to make sure that she can be understood by the American audience:

From the same episode, British actress Sharon Duncan-Brewster plays Samson's mother. There are again video clips and she talks about how she had to sit in the make-up chair for hours when she is aged.

And the great thing about Sharon Duncan-Brewster is that she has also appeared in Doctor Who, in the 2009 tenth doctor "special" "Waters of Mars".

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Or watch it on Youtube here. The lecture is 48 minutes long. It features much of the powerpoint, but some slides have been omitted for copyright reasons. All of the Q&A is also features, though under the veil of darkness.

Update (12 February 2013): I have now made the audio available as an extended episode of the NT Pod. This version has the advantage of enabling you to hear the talk without seeing the speaker constantly waving his arms around.